REPORT #612 February 21, 2003
THE NATIONAL ELECTION, DEVELOPMENT, POVERTY, SOLUTIONS, AND HOW THE
CANDIDATES THINK!

Produced by the Belize
Development Trust

Talking to the candidates of various parties in this National Election
to fill the 29 seats in the House of Representatives, it is simply
astounding how many of them lack the experience or knowledge, of what
makes a community wealthy?

Community Development has been my forte for nearly 50 years and
watching people get wealthy and communities succeed, underlines the
basic building blocks of the process. Around the world, there are
countless organizations, NGO's like the Belize Development Trust and
many other people trying to teach people to comprehend and then act on
those fundamentals to let themselves and their communities get rich and
alleviate poverty. Hampering this process are central corrupt
governments and the foibles of human nature.

The two traditional major political parties in Belize basically
understand the development process and have tried to implement such
endeavors, but where they have fallen short is that they tried to do
these fundamentals through a patronage, Padron, or Jefe plantation
governing system. This is largely self defeating and works against
itself, but some successes on an individual level come through, but
rarely for whole communities. Most of the Independent election
candidates are trying to learn and probably the only one of the many
political candidates in the country, for the House of Representatives
who has a good grasp on the process of development is Francis Gegg, a
businessman running in the City Fort George Division.

I was appalled at a long conversation with one candidate Dr. Jones, a
well educated, articulate and academically intelligent Belize City
leader. From our long conversation it was hard to pin him down on
thoughts of poverty alleviation and community success and how to go
about it. I got the impression that he thought government should do it
by throwing money at the residents of his community? That may be a good
vote getting campaign slogan, but hardly practical for solutions. The
two major parties are also using that same idea to get votes. It seems
getting elected is one thing and has nothing at all to do with fighting
poverty, or making a community, or the nation wealthy?

The basic building blocks of community development and wealth are
teaching people to organize themselves, finding mutual goals they can
agree and vote on, and then setting rules to work together towards these
goals. Basically, wealth and the alleviation of poverty is a group
process of self-organization in a community, or a nation. The
government can only put in the infra-structure to enable people to help
themselves. But bootstrap development out of poverty must come from
within the people themselves who form a pocket of poverty. If they
cannot find the means to organize themselves and cooperate, they are
forever doomed to competition and individual fractious enmity, which in
turn breeds class divisions and poverty.

My own island village of Caye Caulker is a remarkable success story of
this group community effort. So is San Pedro and while the two
communities are similar in cause and effect and the lessons of
organizing themselves to solve common group problems; in the case of San
Pedro, the input of a lot of foreign investors and new stimulating ideas
has aided that community. In comparison my own island village of Caye
Caulker refused to allow foreign investment for the most part and went
their own way. There are no poor village residents on Caye Caulker
anymore and have not been for 25 years or more. The population has
tripled through mainlanders immigrating to the island community and
there is a floating population of migrant workers that come and go
during different seasons.

The comparison between the two rich island communities who learned
some 36 years ago to organize and cooperate with their lobster fishing
cooperatives and solve their own problems through mutual endeavors
instead of individual competition and that of Belize City, is like
walking into two different worlds. In Belize City, it is dog eat dog
and everybody against each other in competition for the scraps from the
table. Whole segments of that city are poor due to the lack of
comprehension of how to help themselves, by organizing to get themselves
out of poverty. The government cannot do this, they must do it
themselves. Throwing money at Belize City cannot do this either. The
process only works when people organize and learn the rules of helping
themselves. Prime examples on Caye Caulker are competitive warring
lobster fishermen. They learned to cooperate when they formed a group
lobster cooperative. In later years the warring business competitors in
the water taxi business finally said this is not working, when people
started sinking boats and stealing propellers and formed the Water Taxi
Association and each driver/owner obeyed their own voted rules of
schedules and queuing for their fair turn at the tourist passenger
trade. There are other smaller group organizations in the community
which reflect the same spirit though. There is an old saying. You can
give a man a fish to eat and it will fill his belly today, but if you
teach him to fish, he will eat every day thereafter.

Governments don't develop countries, people do! Governments supply
the infra-structure and they enable people to help themselves through
giving, fair and rapid public service. The infighting in sections of
Belize City is a glaring example of how development and poverty
alleviation is not done. A typical result. Yet in the same country of
Belize, you have success stories like Caye Caulker and San Pedro that
are shining examples worldwide, of cooperation, group organization and
finding common goals that all business people can agree to do together.
The old saying UNITED WE STAND, and DIVIDED WE FALL is as true today as
it was said many years ago.